Domain name hyphens and their effects on SEO and branding

Does it make sense to include hyphens in your domain? Or, more to the point, is it better for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts if they are — or aren’t — there?

Many affiliates face this problem at least once; those who buy and develop websites on a large scale face it almost daily.

That’s because it’s an extremely common situation: You want to buy a terrific domain name that’s perfect for your niche, with rich, juicy keywords and low competition. But the .com domain for those words is already taken, either in use or parked by someone else.

So, your options are to buy the domain under a less attractive suffix, like .net or .info, or slightly alter the domain name using hyphens. If you can’t have bestonlinepoker.com, maybe it makes sense to buy best-online-poker.com.

There are two perspectives you should consider when answering this question, and both relate directly to your website’s success: SEO and branding.

SEO and domain name hyphens

Before you go buying best-online-poker.com, first consider what effect those hyphens might have on your site’s SEO performance.

Your domain is the name of your whole site, and it’s the most important element in your search rankings. Your domain should be as clear a representation of your exact niche as possible. Given that importance, does it matter if those perfect keywords are separated by a hyphen or two?

What does Google think about that? For Google’s part, whether or not hyphens in domains makes a difference has never been made precisely clear. But it’s widely believed — and SEO results will bear this out — that domain name hyphens are simply ignored by Google, and neither hurt nor help your search engine performance.

The truth is, using hyphens in your domain can actually give you an SEO advantage — if usually a short-lived one. As marketer Patrick Hare points out, “if SEO is the only goal you have for your website, a hyphenated domain name can work wonders.

“It still takes time to rank for competitive keyword phrases, but you can get a bit of a lift from the domain name’s match to inbound anchor text pointing at the site,” Hare writes. But he also admits that those looking for more than SEO — those also concerned with branding — should “consider the acquisition of a site that has no hyphens in the domain name.”

Branding and domain name hyphens

Ultimately, a site with hyphens probably suffers in branding what it gains in SEO.

For starters, it simply doesn’t look good, and it can cheapen a brand’s impact with some more web-savvy prospects. Given a choice, most people would prefer to visit casinoaffiliateprograms.com, not casino-affiliate-programs.com-because we just don’t really trust those hyphens. Think about it: Do any of your favorite, most trusted sites have hyphens in the domains?

Probably not, because, as SEOmoz points out, most of those big name, everyday sites rely on visitors being able to just type in the domain name, and hyphens hinder that ease of access. The same trouble accompanies numbers in domain names — should they be spelt out? Or not? Arguments have been made on either side, but the reality is, you’re smarter to remove the ambiguity altogether and create domains where visitors won’t have to make that decision.

There are also copyright issues. If you’re registering a hyphenated version of an already-well known domain, that domain may be copyrighted, and your attempt to market the same phrase could actually be in violation of that law. If you do decide to go this route, cover all your bases and investigate all other relevant sites closely.

So, if you care about branding (which has become, in this age of social media, much more important than before, and closely related to SEO), you’ll want to avoid hyphens and strive after domains that are keyword-only.

Final question: Branding or SEO?

Still not sure if you want to include a hyphen in your domain? Consider this final question, then: Are you “gaming” the system by choosing your domain keywords, or does it tie into your brand? If it’s for branding, then go with a more professional domain, without a hyphen — you should be able to find related alternatives.

But if you’re in that latter category, also be aware of this fact: you’re at serious risk for a future algorithm change, anyway. Google is known for changing its system to discourage all sorts of “gaming”, and trying to monetize a niche you’re not really interested in will probably fall into that category sooner rather later. After all, Google, doesn’t discourage hyphens now — but who can predict what’ll happen in a few years?

Sound off!That’s our assessment, but not everyone’s going to agree. If you have thoughts on the topic, let us know how you feel. Maybe some of your favorite domains have hyphens? Maybe branding isn’t nearly as important as SEO, in your opinion? Let us know! We can take the heat!

10 Responses to Domain name hyphens and their effects on SEO and branding

rialto.carlo May 20, 2011 at 2:10 pm

Interesting article. There certainly is a disparity between a hyphenated domain and its non-hyphenated counterpart.

With regards to “word of mouth marketing”, when you tell someone about a cool website like 4chan.org (when you were 15) you need to very specific to the person that it is a numerical four. Similarly, when you tell a peer about blue-widgets.com you have to inform them of the hyphen. More often that not, in both examples you could give a direct competitor the traffic if they owned fourchan.org and bluewidgets.com.

In the online casino sphere, SEO will account for your most prolific effort in publicizing and generating traffic to your website. Exception to this may be if you’re trying to build a viral or social platform, in which case you’ll want your domain to be clean, simple and hyphen free.

SEO wise, hyphenated domains are good, especially since the non hyphenated versions are almost always unavailable (registered). If you ever have the choice, buy the domain without hyphens AND the hyphenated version (first step in crushing competition on a keyword).

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Hypenated Domains are harder to remember. Matt Cutt’s has a video about it. As far as keywords in the domain remember this, everywhere you have a straight URL link pointing back to your site, it will have the keywords in it and we all know Google does seem to give more rank to a link with the keywords in it. Also it can’t be seen as spammy or unnatural if it is your domain. Good Luck Everybody!!

It’s important to realize that most of us don’t really get that much traffic from direct url entry. Almost all of it comes from inbound links, whether that be from search engines or elsewhere. So our domain name can be in Chinese and it won’t matter much.

We also need to be clear on the fact that our url and our brand aren’t necessarily that connected. Most of our branding efforts take place in site, once again because we really don’t get much word of mouth traffic.

What this really comes down to is weighing the extra SEO benefits from getting any domain we want and matching it up, which is significant but not quite as powerful as many people think, with the chance that people may look to enter our url and forget the hyphens and be unable to remember them. So that’s not even close really.

The only reason that people might not notice the hyphens sometimes is merely due to their not being used that much now. That’s changing though as time goes on.

Ultimately though, I still prefer non hyphenated branded url’s where the brand functions as the modifier, like kensbonusreviews and the like. This both adds branding, gets you anything you want, pumps up the SEO, and doesn’t have hyphens to confuse anyone

I’m about to buy a long 6 words domain name for a client (he absolutly want these 6 words). In this case it’s very hard to read the sentence without the hypens. I think two domain name will be the solution, one forwarding to the other. Thank you

I can’t imagine that being preferable to hyphens Vincent and that’s another benefit of them. You’ll just end up with half of your message being the one that’s indexed, which will definitely be the bigger price to pay I would imagine.